They Came Back (Les Revenants)

Laura Clifford

Robin Clifford

One day the inhabitants of an average French town find their population
has increased by thirteen thousand people. But these are all people
they know, people who have lived in this town before, people who have died
over the past ten years. "They Came Back."

Laura:
This is the feature directorial debut of Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet's
cowriter and editor on the masterful "Time Out," but where that film's rather
common premise - the paralysis wrought by the demands of the working world
- was used to moving artistic ends, this film's engagingly original premise
allows for some probing social exploration but ultimately fails to draw any
real conclusions. Still, until it trails off into the ether at the
end, "They Came Back" is a pretty interesting study.

Unlike "The Monkey's Paw," we witness no one in this provincial French town
wishing for the return of their loved ones, just their varied responses to
the event which opens the film. As thousands shuffle down the city streets
(all showing no signs of trauma, disease or decomposition), the town's mayor
(Victor Garrivier, "Les Destinées," "Crimson Rivers 2") presides over
an emergency meeting and press conference to decide how to handle the influx.
His right-hand man, Isham (Djemel Barek, "Munich"), races off to join his
wife Véronique (Marie Matheron, "Le Grand chemin") in a quest to find
their seven year old son, Sylvain (Saady Delas), at the holding center, but
the mayor himself looks wary as leaves the task of attending to his wife,
Martha (Catherine Samie, "Le Divorce"), waving from the street below, to
their children.

Campillo and cowriter Brigitte Tijou follow these two stories in addition
to a third, more prominent thread involving hospital worker Rachel (Géraldine
Pailhas, "L'Adversaire," "5x2"), who has no plans to collect her young husband
Mathieu (Jonathan Zaccaï, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped"). He
finds her, however, and simply follows her home on foot one night. She makes
love to him as her colleague and his doctor, Gardet (Frédéric
Pierrot, "Artemisia," "Monsieur N.") observes with a night scope.

While at first the dead are treated like refugees with the rights to return
to their families and their jobs, their strange behavior turns the tide and
the living begin treating them like second class citizens. They are
5 degrees cooler than the living, who put them under surveillance and discover
that they all, even the eldest, walk fifteen kilometers a day towards a meeting
place at night. They are drugged to slow down, like mental patients.
Their vacant behavior is diagnosed as copying the living and replaying from
memory (one can observe that Martha, who as the eldest returnee has the most
memories, shows the greatest spark of life whereas Sylvain is little but
walking doll who creeps out his classmates), their comprehension of word
patterns failing when put into unfamiliar configurations. Mathieu,
reintegrated in his job as an architect, deliver plans which his superiors
interpret as nonsensical, and so he is downgraded to manual labor.
But his plans are at the heart of the night wanderings - those who have returned
immediately focus on returning from whence they came.

Campillo achieves a spooky tone without ever making one feel the living are
in danger. There's a hushed quality to the film, as if experiencing everything
through a filter or fog, perhaps the point of view of those who have come
back. Original music by Jocelyn Pook ("Time Out," "Gangs of New York")
and Martin Wheeler supports the out of kilter, almost under water feel.
The whole slo-mo build keeps one in its spell, but when the film concludes,
we have no understanding of what drove the dead to come back, only how they
were received.

B-

Robin:
The dead, at least those who have been deceased for less than ten years,
are back. These new-age zombies don’t want to eat the flesh of the living,
though, they just want their old lives back. But, the returnees are not quite
alive and their agenda is not understood as they try to reintegrate into a
world no longer theirs in “They Came Back.”

Even though this is, at least on the surface, a zombie” movie, don’t expect
to have the thrills and chills of George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living
Dead.” There are no dead-eyed flesh-eaters lumbering around the countryside
looking for a grisly morsel or two among the living. Instead, director and
co-scripter Robin Campillo (sharing writing credits with Brigitte Tijou),
comes up with a truly original spin on the old zombie story.

One day, the recently deceased emerge from cemeteries from all over the
land and begin their walk back to the land of the living. Campillo makes
no effort to tell us why they have risen from the dead (never mind that they
return in physically pristine condition – no mean feat for someone buried
for up to ten years). But, this doesn’t matter as she lays out a world where
the dead return in a benign, but still very creepy, way.

They Came Back” leaves you with far more questions than it answers but the
atmospheric look and feel of the film leaves a lasting impression anyway.
It focuses on three of the returnees – a young husband, an elderly wife and
a child – showing the confusion that their loved ones have with their sudden
arrival. These personal stories are mixed with the socio-political ramifications
that such a return would have on society as the government tries to get to
the bottom of the mystery. And that’s what “They Came Back” is – a mystery,
not a horror film.

So, if you want to go see a film where mutant zombies pillage the countryside
looking for victims, go elsewhere. (I would suggest Romero’s “Night…” as an
excellent place to start.) But, if you are looking for an intelligent, well-crafted
and creepy story (without violence) then “They Came Back” is for you. It’s
an original in a genre done to death (pun intended). I give it a B-.